Support Information

Support for you as a parent

Description

The Canadian Network of Substance Abuse and Allied Professionals publishes its professional standards on this website. Here you can review the technical and behavioural competencies identified as necessary to the substance abuse workforce. How do professionals in this field ensure quality client care? As a client or the parent of a client, you should know what to expect–and what to demand.

CNSAAP’s site also heralds the”first-ever Canadian standards for youth substance abuse prevention” from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA). These take the form of Building on Our Strengths: Canadian Standards for School-based Youth Substance Abuse Prevention-A Guide for Education and Health Personnel. The standards were developed as a resource for those in the field to help strengthen school-centred prevention efforts across Canada. Get acquainted with these standards and be an advocate for effective prevention in your child’s school.

Description

Thirty-one relevant questions about addiction treatment are organized in this double sided chart. You will be well prepared to get the answers you need if you print this chart and become familiar with its contents.

Note-taking in an interview may go faster if you personalize the chart. It is constructed so you can make a wish list with it. Then you can use the chart as a checklist.

Description

If your child’s addiction disorder is concurrent with a chronic mental disorder, or if the addiction disorder seems likely to prevent him or her from becoming financially self-sufficient, he or she may be eligible for a disability pension. At this Web address, the BC Coalition of Persons with Disabilities, with the skilled assistance of the Legal Assistance Society, offers Help Sheets that help you work through the red tape of the pension application process.

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Parents of a young person with an addiction disorder (or of concurrent disorders) will probably find they have a lot in common with the parents whose experience is the basis of this advice from the B.C. Schizophrenia Society.

Description

A director of FGTA, Nichola Malim Hall, guest-edited Volume 8, Number 3 of Visions Journal from the Here to Help coalition. Among the article authors is Frances Kenny, who created and has facilitated the Parents Forever support group for families affected by addiction. Sample the contents of this excellent journal at the link below. The archive copies are worth browsing as well.

Description

The Three Things campaign has a viewpoint sympathetic to the families of those who struggle with any of the common substance misuse issues evident in BC communities. It recognizes how unique each disorder is. “Addiction is a complex issue,” begins the website home page. “It doesn’t always fit a certain mould or follow a particular path.”

Take a look around the website, and download the posters if you know how to put them up where they will get respectful attention. Whether the posters interest you or not, you might take heart from the compassion that this campaign promotes with its straightforward explanations and practical calls to action.

The “three things” are messages framed for combatting the stigma that keeps people from asking for help:

Addiction is not a choice. People may choose to use alcohol or drugs, but nobody chooses to become addicted.

Stereotypes about addiction are misguided. People with addictions are not always whom you’d picture. Addiction can happen to people from all walks of life.

People with addictions are not a lost cause. They are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect – and your support can make a difference!

Description

From the website: “We are a group of seven leading provincial mental health and addictions nonprofit agencies working together as the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information. Since 2003, we’ve been combining our efforts to help individuals and families better manage mental health and substance use problems.”

Among this site’s most popular resources are the Family Toolkit’s 5 modules. The Family Toolkitis designed to assist families in caring for a family member with a mental illness/addiction by providing information and practical resources. By educating yourself as much as you can about the mental or substance use disorder, you can take an active role in your family member’s recovery.

Description

The Here to Help website is hosted for a group of seven leading provincial mental health and addictions nonprofit agencies working together as the BC Partners for Mental Health and Addictions Information. This is module 4 from a complete handbook available on the Here to Help site.

Description

This detailed checklist from the Schizophrenia Society is a tried-and-true aid for anyone who is meeting a patient at the hospital on their release after a drug-related emergency, especially for the first or only time.

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Read stories similar to your own in the online forum at Learn2Cope. It grows every day with postings from parents, family members and their loved ones who are recovering from drug addictions. The forum administrators are on the job 24/7, so you can register to read forum notices and discussions at any time.

Based in Massachusetts, the site is a clear window into a region similar to southern British Columbia for the size of its black market in drugs–and the callousness with which its merchants exploit young people. For advocacy-focused parents in BC, there’s also food for thought parents in the organization’s history and the policy issues it confronts in health care and jurisprudence.

Description

Youth, peer support (for parents and others) and “a room of one’s own” are all news and activity areas represented on this website, in the newsletter, and in other publications from Canada’s Mental Health Commission.

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Naloxone is a medication that reverses the effects of an overdose from opioids (e.g. heroin, methadone, morphine). BC has developed a Take Home Naloxone (THN) Program to help save lives. This site will help you learn more about THN programs and how the BC THN program can be part of your community .

Description

As the FGTA Coping Kit notes, you can’t help a loved one achieve health and freedom from addiction if you yourself have become unwell from the stresses and strains that addiction brings into the family. These principles define the limits of a mutually constructive effort on behalf of a family member with an addiction disorder.

Description

In 2009, Abbotsford’s police department launched Operation Lodestar, a program of videos and presentation for parents that they had developed with the help of experts in gang violence prevention. Featured in the introductory video are mothers who had brought up happy, active boys only to lose them because of drugs, addiction and armed gang vengeance or betrayal.

Description

For every regional urban hub in BC, there is a clinic–possibly more than one–offering dental services at reduced cost.

This site holds details about Community Dental Day, an annual province-wide program in April to provide free, urgent dental treatment to low-income working adults and seniors who don’t have a private dental plan.

The rest of the year, this link helps you find the clinic closest to your addicted family member so you can direct your son or daughter to help in a dental emergency. Ideally, this information can encourage your whole family to stay in a routine of preventive care. There will be a time for bright smiles!

Description

Raincity Housing and Support Society is now operating two mobile harm reduction services, principally for Vancouver areas other than the Downtown East Side. The services are too new to be on the organization’s website, but more information is available from Manny Cu at 604.376.6067, e-mail mcu@raincityhousing.org.

Needle ExchangeThis mobile service provides clean needles and other harm reduction supplies with the aim of preventing the transmission of HIV, Hepatitis C and other infections that can result from unsafe practices. While giving out clean needles staff take the opportunity to teach our clients safer harm reduction practices.Needle Recovery/Pick-upIf you find a discarded syringe in your neighbourhood call the Needle Pick-up hotline and the Community Pick-up Van will be there to recover and dispose of it safely. The hotline offers rapid needle recovery service 7 days a week, 19 hours a day, and the hours are from 7a.m. until 2 a.m.The Needle Pick-up Hotline is: 604.657.6561

Please remember in viewing the information on this
website that FGTA provides this information
without warranty or guarantee of any kind, either
expressed or implied. FGTA does not assume any
liability or responsibility for services that may be
provided by any treatment centre or other resource
named on this website and therefore shall not be
liable for any costs or injury incurred, directly or
indirectly, by any person using such services.